It has been a busy week in the Holme
Valley, and, inspired no doubt by Uncle Phil departing to return home to
Darwin, NT, the temperatures here in the UK suddenly decided to try and compete with the
steamy equatorial heat of Northern Australia. It’s been so good to wake up to a
succession of warm, mainly sunny days, that I have been trying to wring every
last little joy out of the experience, even bunking off to re-pot the odd herb,
when I should really have been working on dreary things like accounts and
marketing. “Joy” is perhaps an odd word
to use in the circumstances, but I really do feel as if I have earned this
weather – we all have, in fact, when you think back to the dreariness of the
cold and the ice and the snow that lasted for weeks and weeks back in March.
Misty and Matilda were both quite
startled when everyone got up at 4.45AM on Tuesday morning to see Uncle Phil
off. Mind you, so was I. I attempted to
go back to bed again, but couldn’t really get back to sleep, until I finally
drifted off at around 7AM, just in time to be woken up again half an hour later
by the morons down at Park Valley Mills, who are once again hellbent on causing
as much noise and disruption as they can, as early as they can in the day.
Matilda really loves this warm
weather, too. She’s taken to going outside first thing in the morning and
staying out more or less all day, lounging around in the sun, usually round the
corner on the bit of decking behind the garage, which has always been a bit of
a sun-trap, it’s just that we never normally have enough sun to trap there. The
wily sun hides away behind the clouds instead. Anyway, this week, it’s been
well and truly trapped, to Matilda’s benefit. Habitually, around 7pm, she comes
inside for something to eat from the magically-refilling food dish, then
settles down and goes to sleep on the foot of my bed, occasionally re-appearing
for a brief foray in time for News at Ten.
Actually, the magically-refilling
food dish isn’t so magic these days, since the advent of Misty, who tends to go
around and hoover up anything left by anybody. We were worried we weren’t
feeding her enough of her proper dog food, and she was foraging because she was
still hungry, but we double-checked with Barbara at the Border Collie sanctuary
and no, we are right, we are feeding her the right amount, it’s just that she’s
greedy, apparently!
Other than that, considering that
she has every right to be withdrawn and angry at the human race for leaving her
tied up at the side of a road, she’s a remarkably trusting and friendly little
dog. We’ve also noticed that the top
corner of her right ear is missing – a clean cut, not a ragged one. We can only
begin to imagine the things she might have been through, but she’s settled in
remarkably quickly, especially when it comes to sitting on the settee next to
Debbie. There are still some occasional
aberrations. She isn’t very good at “come here”, and every so often she seems
to feel the need to explore the world at large, which has meant that Deb’s had
to spend a considerable time blocking up all the little dog shaped holes in the
garden and making it more secure, especially after Misty gave her the slip on
Wednesday morning and managed to escape into next door’s garden; I opened the
door, on my way out to see if she was round the front, to find my next-door
neighbour’s daughter standing on my wheelchair ramp holding on to Misty by the
collar. She was told off severely for being a bad girl and that she shouldn’t
ever do it again. (Misty, I mean. I was extremely grateful to my neighbour’s
daughter for catching her before she ended up back in Bradford!)
Misty’s learning “give paw”, and she
knows several other commands already. Her ability to retrieve sticks from the
River Holme seems to vary dramatically day by day. On Wednesday, in company
with Deb’s Dad, and with Zak there to show her the ropes, Misty confidently
fetched and retrieved the floating sticks which Debbie threw for her, like a
good ‘un. The next day, without Zak, she stood on the bank and ignored them,
looking puzzled. Then Debbie threw a stick for her that she couldn't fiind, so she ended up bringing back another stick, then dropping that half-way.
Deb has bought her a
small, squeaky ball, and they were playing football with it in the conservatory
the other evening (don’t ask!) All was going well until Debbie backheeled it
instead of kicking it, and it went under a chair. Cue several minutes of confused
searching by Misty, until Debbie got fed up and actually showed her where it
was. I fear we may have re-homed a special needs collie. Eyes two different
colours, and 1⅞ ears. She’s also more
than capable of pressing the “cuteness” button, though, especially when there
might be a dog treat in the offing. Or indeed anything to her advantage. As
Barbara remarked: “She knew what she was doing, the day she jumped up into the
camper and cuddled up next to you!” She’s certainly a dog that, as the old
saying goes, “won’t eat mutton when lamb’s in season”.
Maisie’s ferals, meanwhile, by
contrast, remain un-re-homed, if that’s even a word. I am starting to feel like
one of those little balls inside a pinball machine, especially as the Cats’
Protection League and the RSPCA, both massive organisations with large cash
reserves and modern, well-appointed head offices with paid staff, have totally
failed to respond in any meaningful way to my repeated requests to find a
sanctuary somewhere in the UK with some space.
We can organise the traps, we can organise the transport, we just need
somewhere willing to take on Bill and Sunshine, in return for a donation. I am
definitely removing the donation to the CPL from my will, whatever happens, and
I have sent a two-page letter to the chief executive of the RSPCA complaining
about the Chinese Wall of Non-Communication which surrounds them. No reply! So,
next week I am going to start tweeting them directly. When their phone starts
pinging every 15 minutes, they might start taking notice.
The birds and squirrels have been
notable by their absence, as indeed has Brenda the badger. The only way to find out what or who is still
eating the peanuts I occasionally leave out for her would be to stay up and
mount an all-night vigil, but these days I am just too knackered to do this.
Talking of food, some enterprising
soul has started a "Rice and Noodles" takeaway in Huddersfield,
and pushed a menu through our door during the week. Delights on offer include
the “Tung Tong Golden Basket”, which consists, apparently, of "crispy
purses filled with water chestnuts, corn, slithers [sic] of chicken and
coriander." If it’s all the same to you, dear, if I was wanting to eat
lumps of dead chicken, I would prefer it if it just lay there, actually, and
didn't slither. Great “slivering” serpents! Does nobody proof-read these
things?
It’s been a week tinged with a
degree of sadness, too, despite all this jollity. I realised that it must be
coming up to the time to renew the rental on the memorial plaque attached to
the tree planted in memory of my parents, plus Auntie Maud and Granny Fenwick, in
the grounds of the Chanterlands Crematorium in Hull. For those of you unfamiliar with the process,
the council doesn’t guarantee to maintain a memorial to your dead relatives for
ever. You rent it in 10-year blocks.
This is, of course, a racket. Not so much because they charge at all –
their defence is that, if they didn’t, the Crematorium grounds would be
cluttered with memorials that were no longer relevant, or something. Personally, I don’t mind that
concept – I’ve written before about what peaceful and thoughtful places
overgrown cemeteries can be, but you can’t fight City Hall. No, the
racketeering lies in the amount they want you to pay, and, of course, they play
on the fact that nobody wants to be seen to be skimping on the memories of
their deceased loved ones, so people pay up without a murmur. I have no doubt, personally, that each and
every one of the four people whose ashes are interred under that tree would
say, “Don’t be daft, spend the money on the living, not the dead.”
In passing, I noted that the little
disclaimer at the foot of the Hull City Council Crematorium email said that
they endeavour (not promise, mind) to answer all correspondence within ten
working days. I was sorely tempted to send them another email back, asking if,
in view of the hot weather, they could possibly hurry it up a bit, as my Auntie
has died and she won’t fit in the fridge-freezer.
Term has finally ended, in Debbie’s
case with a number of meetings and visits to college to hand stuff in, none of
which she will get paid for. She has five hours of definite teaching per week
from September, with the possibility of upping that, by providing cover for
other people. It’s a hefty drop from what she was doing last year (the College
has to pay for its shiny new £74million building with no car park somehow) but
that may be no bad thing, in that the hours she was doing last year damn near
killed her, with all of the additional preparation and travelling. Monetarily, of course, it’s a different
matter. We’ll just have to see how it pans out.
So, theoretically, no more
twelve-hour days. Deb has been celebrating by sitting in the sun in a
deckchair, on the decking, appropriately enough, and reading her Ray Mears
survival books. As I said to her the other morning, when I handed her out three
slices of Marmite on toast through the conservatory door, she would have no
trouble at all surviving in the wild, as long as I was around to make breakfast.
I was casting around to find a
suitable saint for this week’s Epiblog, and to be honest, all of the ones I
researched were, frankly, a bit boring.
But it is certainly a memorable secular anniversary, of course, because
it is Bastille Day. And several things
which have come up in the news this week have made it actually quite apposite
to remember the French Revolution, even though it did all end in tears – as
most revolutions seem to. Still, a
little revolutionary zeal would do no harm, in a week when the Junta announced
the privatisation of Royal Mail (what page of the manifesto was that on, then?)
and the possibility of an 11% pay rise for MPs from 2015. Not to mention the
clashes at Prime Minister’s Question Time over the funding of political
parties. David Cameron's justification for rejecting a £5000 cap on
individual donations to political parties is apparently that if it was
implemented, there would have to be some sort of taxpayer-funded element to
make up the difference.
Er, excuse me? What do they need all this money for anyway?
Sorry, but no. NOT A PENNY OF TAXPAYERS' MONEY should go to funding the
propaganda machines of political parties. Make do with what donations you can
get. You might get more people joining
your parties if you were a bit more representative, for instance, and a little
less cocooned from reality.
As far as the Royal Mail goes, I said more or less
everything I have to say about this on my other blog, in December 2008. It’s
very depressing to think that we have to keep resurrecting these old reasons
why privatising the Royal Mail is a bad idea, every time Vince Cable rises like
a zombie and totters to the despatch box in Parliament. Anyway, for anyone who
still cares about the public services in this country, this is why it’s a bad
idea to privatise Royal Mail. It will
end up in a worse service to the general public, at a higher price. See also under
railways.
As to the MPs, I really don’t have anything to add to this,
except to say that I would ban MPs from having any
additional employment while sitting as an MP, that they should have to live in
a constituency for three years before being allowed to represent it; that they
should have one house, in the constituency, which they pay for; and that they
should not be allowed to “pair” with members of the opposite bench. Make the
buggers turn up and vote in person.
As I wrote in December 2009:
If they have the brass
nuts to try and claim for moat cleaning, duck houses, and bell tower repair on
the public purse, they deserve EVERYTHING coming their way. If they want
respect, they should shut up and earn respect, instead of whinging about
"having to live on rations". As to their pay, a) most of them have
several other jobs and b) if they don't like it, they can shove off and join
the poor unloved bankers who are going to throw their teddy out the pram and
all move to New York or Geneva. I'll do their job. I'll be an MP, for
that money. Three times what I earned last year, before tax. Yes please. While
there is still ONE homeless person in Britain these cold nights, I would
REQUISITION MPs' second homes for emergency accommodation, and make them sleep
on cardboard boxes in a sleeping bag under Westminster Bridge, until they do
something to end it.
A rather under-reported, but
nevertheless significant, news event this week was the recording of a verdict of
unlawful killing in the case of Jimmy Mubenga. I first wrote about the case in 2010. On 12th
October that year, on board BA Flight 77 from the UK
to Luanda, Angola,
Jimmy Mubenga, a 46-year-old who had been in Britain for 16 years and had lost a
long series of appeals, and who was being forcibly detained by Group 4
Security, working on behalf of the UK Borders Agency, died. Several witness
statements speak of him complaining and undergoing breathing difficulties while
under restraint. Anyway, this week, a coroner finally decided he was unlawfully
killed. It remains to be seen what, if anything, will happen now.
Jimmy Mubenga was no saint. He was
being deported at the end of a two year jail sentence for assault. But once again, as I have said before, this
only serves to point up that deporting someone after they have already served a
jail sentence is actually punishing them twice for the same crime. I’d like to
think that the Great Britain
I know and love would do either/or, but not both. However, that’s beside the point. Whatever
their legal status, people should not die in custody because of inept or
inappropriate restraint by ham-fisted security guards. This is what I wrote about the case
in 2009.
It
won't bring him back, but perhaps 12 October every year could be remembered as Jimmy Mubenga day, until the UK Borders
Agency is no more, disbanded for good, and Group 4 once more recognises that
its true level of competence is in losing, or occasionally delivering,
overnight parcels (or knocking on the door and leaving a card, even though you
were in the house at the time). They were crap at that, but at least they
didn't kill anyone.
Well, the UK Borders Agency is no
more, but the astonishing level of incompetence at G4S as they are called these
days, continues to infest the public services. And yet, unaccountably, somehow,
we allow them to continue living and breathing. Unlike Jimmy Mubenga.
The BBC, another seriously-flawed institution, seems to be
on a crusade at the moment to monster the poorest in society. This week they
had a programme called "we pay your benefits" or something like that
which "confronted" three people on benefits with three people who
were hard-working "strivers". Never mind that there are some people
in work who are also on benefits, or that it's perfectly possible to be a hard
working striver on July 15th, keel over on July 16th, almost die,
and end up on benefits after 6 months in hospital. No siree, in the BBC's world
it's either/or. The deserving and the "undeserving"
And then there was the programme about families living on a breadline food budget - the chef was sent out to shop with the family’s normal amount to spend on food and immediately topped it up by buying an £11.00 side of fresh salmon! Idiot. Now every white van man who happened to be watching BBC1 that night is firmly convinced that the most disadvantaged in our society dine nightly on smoked salmon. Well done, the BBC!
And then there was the programme about families living on a breadline food budget - the chef was sent out to shop with the family’s normal amount to spend on food and immediately topped it up by buying an £11.00 side of fresh salmon! Idiot. Now every white van man who happened to be watching BBC1 that night is firmly convinced that the most disadvantaged in our society dine nightly on smoked salmon. Well done, the BBC!
So, we don’t really have a saint to finish off with today,
and, to be honest, I am in a very “aux barricades” mood right now. In a situation where the Labour Party have
pulled the rug from underneath the poor, the disadvantaged and the ill by
prematurely conceding all the arguments on the economy, benefits and
immigration, ahead of the 2015 election, there’s not a lot to look forward
to. Though cowards flinch and traitors
sneer, we’ll keep the white flag flying here. Maybe storming the Bastille is the answer
after all. When the best that the effete, pampered ruling class can come up with is
“Let them eat cake!” maybe it is actually time the tumbrels started rolling.
Tomorrow, of course, is the Feast of St Swithun, which we
have celebrated many times before. Three years ago, I “celebrated” it by being
carted off in an ambulance for a bowel resection. Nice. Two years ago, however,
in a comeback Elvis would have been proud of, I celebrated it by sitting round
a table at Mossburn Animal Centre with Debbie, Juanita, and Kate McLaren, while
Tiggy and Oliver sprawled underneath the table, as we sang “The 51st
Highland Division’s Farewell to Sicily”,
and caroused into the early hours. Ah, happy days.
If the weather holds, it looks like, this year, St Swithun’s
day might be worth celebrating again. 40 days and 40 nights of sweltering
weather would set me up just right for another nithering winter. Although this
year, it will mark the start of us packing the camper to depart on holiday. As
usual, we don’t know where we are going, and we have made no plans, but if
there’s no Epiblog next Sunday, that’s why. I will be taking the netbook, but
the hairy-arsed regions of the North are sometimes lacking in free wi-fi
(though Tesco’s car park in Dumfries is a
“hotspot”).
I have mixed feelings about going on holiday. Mainly
surrounding Matilda and her welfare while we are away. We have already
organised for her to be fed and watered by a combination of The Doggy Nanny and
Granny, in principle at any rate, but given what happened last year, I have
very grave reservations about leaving her at all. On the other hand, in the same way as I feel
I have earned this summer weather, Debbie has surely earned the right to go
kayaking in return for all those dreary hours getting up before dawn and
driving through the snowdrifts in freeing winter conditions to some Godforsaken
outreach centre in Stalybridge to teach people literacy for a college hierarchy
that didn’t care if she lived or died.
So we probably will end up going. Somewhere, at any rate.
It may well be good for me to have a break from churning out
all this bile and vitriol, as well. I’ve come to the conclusion that God is busy
elsewhere at the moment, and is not listening to my prayers. Bill and Sunshine
alone are testimony to that. If there is
a God, and my prayers are answered, the Houses of Parliament will be struck by
lightning; we’ll see. It’s beginning to
look like we’re on our own, though, chaps. I suppose even God deserves a
holiday, we shouldn’t begrudge the old codger, but some days I think that those
bits of life’s beach where there was just one set of footprints really was just
me.
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